Fun moving over contacts
I don’t know why anyone else would want to do this, but here goes.
So I am between jobs and I have to give back my Android G1 and use my old Nokia 6600 for a few weeks. That means moving over my contacts, which turns out to be a lot easier than I expected:
- Android G1 contacts are synchronised with my Google mail account. So log into Gmail, then click Contacts > Export. Export “Everyone” in “vCard format”, saving the .vcf file to your Nokia MMC card.
- Download and install Best vCard for S60, and use it to open the .vcf file on your MMC. Import all contacts and you’re done.
All the regular issues:
- Umlauts are corrupted, i.e. characters üöäÜÖÄß become split pairs (surrogate pairs), or Mark Münsterman becomes MÄ$nsterman.
- Contact labels are missing. So instead of having a Business, Home and Mobile number for someone I have 3x numbers labelled “Telephone”.
Clearly there is room for a global standard for moving, updating and synching contacts between systems. Most people I know find themselves moving between systems (Outlook, phone, webmail, Facebook, etc) and spend time maintaining their contacts, or just don’t bother at all.
The world awaits my next invention.
